ep1str0phy

Not to get too far off topic, but I've shifted on this issue a bit. There is indeed such a thing as aggressive (and possibly arrogant) confrontationalism, the likes of which celebrate the alienation of audiences and the abject obscurity of the artist. At the same time, I feel (anecdotally) that 90% of musicians who operate in fringe or avant musics aren't trying to be so out that they, as you suggest, drift into oblivion. Consider someone like Sonny Sharrock, whose influence is absolutely everywhere - had it not been for Herbie Mann and Bill Laswell, certain epochal stages in the development of improvised guitar may have been lost to obscurity. Consider, too, that Sonny had (and I'm paraphrasing his words here) tried to "sell out" on numerous occasions - only to fail at every turn. Does this make Sonny one of the players with "personal discipline and clarity of vision," or is he just one of the lucky ones? Does it matter? In a historical context, that's all the more opportunity to celebrate artists who have managed, by force of will or ingenuity, to survive without compromising their art. Guys like Milford and Cecil toiled in obscurity for long stretches of their careers, going essentially undocumented for years at a time. It's virtually impossible for this to happen (unless by intention) in 2021. Milford kept his head above water because he was - and I use these words very selectively - a fucking genius. In short, I wouldn't knock any number of guys who, say, appeared on an ESP Disk session and proceeded to almost completely wipe out - they may not have been the "special" ones, but they're also victims of circumstance to a degree.

There are a couple of (relevant) points to be made: (1) I think it's reasonable to argue that the social divisions between "avant-garde" and "mainstream" have been a little overexaggerated by history, and (2) the well-traded narrative that free jazz was about dissolving conventions is only a partial truth. Time and historical perspective (it's been, what, 50-60 years?!) have clarified that free jazz as a gestalt was more about expanding the repertoire of possibilities in the music rather than erasing the technical innovations of the music(s) that preceded it. The folks who survived the music's heyday each had coherent, often evolving artistic concepts - e.g., Ornette, Cecil, Sun Ra, etc. It also bears notice that a lot of people commonly associated with the genre have balked at the "free music" as praxis thing (Sun Ra: "there is no freedom in the universe"). Moreover, many of the folks who did and do strongly associate with the "free music" appellation often had political (as opposed to strictly aesthetic) reasons for doing so - which is a big reason why we're forced to compartmentalize the music of the South Africans, Europeans, etc. into a different genre category. With regard to my point above, who in 1959 would have guessed that Don Cherry was about a million things besides playing trumpet? I think there were a lot of surface attempts at the turn of the 1960s to bottle the sound of early free jazz and reapply it in more palatable, marketable, or controllable ways. (I don't mean to rag on the guy, but I keep thinking about Jimmy Woods in this regard.) This was, of course, a failing venture, as - again - the chief innovation of free jazz was in expanding the range of expressive possibilities in the music. Cats like Mingus understood this basic idea and found ways to use the innovations of Ornette, Cherry, etc. to grow their own work.

Pretty gutting news - his work was a big part of my youth. Not to take this conversation in that direction, but more recognition of a feat of consequence: anecdotally, he seemed like one of only a handful of comedians who could engender positive feelings from both sides of the political spectrum. The fact that he was able to do what he did - so hilariously, and artfully enough to build a kind of consensus - is remarkable.

Hang in there, man. A lot of people are rooting for you!

I think that Mingus's concerns were founded in reality, as it is arguably (though I might say unequivocally) true that the advent of free jazz fostered visibility for scores of musicians who might otherwise have been considered technically "incomplete." I also don't think that Mingus's attitude was particularly novel. A friend of mine who very reputably ran in post-bop/free jazz circles once intimated, "Man, everyone knew those cats couldn't play." Another friend of mine - an army veteran who intersected with this time in history (saw Ornette at the Five Spot, Coltrane at the Half Note, etc. etc.) one related this anecdote: Oliver Nelson was sitting the audience for a New York Art Quartet gig. After the gig, Nelson was approached by Lewis Worrell, who asked Nelson for his thoughts. Nelson replied, "You have to play inside before you can play outside." I think that what many among the jazz mainstream or left-mainstream (understandably) missed - and what others, like Mingus, may have implicitly recognized - is that there was something in Cherry's playing that was not in Curson's playing. Curson may have been the superior technician, but Cherry had a clarity of concept that was undeniable. Speaking subjectively, I sense that the "death" of free jazz as an art that required both consideration and confrontation had less to do with the sound of the music and more to do with its cost. Willful experimentation levied serious economic consequences on the music's practitioners - especially after the energy of the 60s dissipated - and those who couldn't hang just moved on to other things. A lot of the movement's sustainable innovations were integrated into other things. What jazz musicians in the 60s and 70s could not have anticipated was the latter-day resurgence in interest in free jazz as a kind of "art music" apart from the mainstream. While outright experimentation remains an economically challenging career pathway, trading in the sounds of the 1960s is actually kind of lucrative now (from a certain point of view). In one of my last exchanges with Milford Graves, we spoke a bit about the explosive costs of some SRP and IPS records. I think he was more than a little bemused, as he related (and I'm only paraphrasing here) that none of that music made very much money back in the day. I'd imagine (speaking only from my read of the situation) that though Professor Graves held a deep conviction in his own work, he was maybe unable to see even his late career success as anything other than part of a career-long battle for due recognition.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Wikipedia entry explains Marshall's involvement in a pretty succinct fashion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Arts_Ensemble One record I'm rather fond of (but have not heard much mention of) is P'nk J'zz. It's credited to "Charles "Bobo" Shaw & The Human Arts Ensemble Featuring Joseph Bowie," but it slots just as neatly into the continuum of Julius Hemphill's music. Hemphill and the redoubtable Abdul Wadud both feature. The energy and programming on the record are both really solid, and the unconventional instrumentation (w/cello, trombone, and electric bass) appeals. Actually rather tangential to the Human Rights Ensemble, but I can't say enough good things about Billy Bang's Sweet Space. The connective tissue here is the presence of Luther Thomas, who has a solo on "A Pebble Is A Small Rock" that bridges energy music histrionics and pseudo-no wave nihilism in a really spectacular way. I haven't spent as much time with Thomas's discography as I'd like to have, but his playing on the entire LP hits this really interesting sweet spot for me. (The record also has some of the best Steve McCall outside of Air, IMO.)

It's this character in the music that I find appealing - not the machoism, of course, but the imperfection in the core concept. Insofar as this period of Trane is experimental in a practical sense, it may even be fair to argue that Alice, Frank Wright, Horace Tapscott, and any number of other artists took the basic formulae of this era and perfected it into something more fully realized. What makes this era so special is that it both presages something new and unravels something that was already perfect (i.e., the classic quartet). Like, that quartet formula was ironclad, and it's worth considering that that band was performing regularly for, what, five or so years? I'd imagine that that quartet would arrive at junctures where it felt devoid of risk, and maybe it was the imperative of the leader to push it in directions that accorded with his own desire to learn, self-actualize, etc. There are obvious indications that Trane was cognizant of the fact that the quartet music was so correct that it was probably foolhardy to abandon it wholesale (e.g., "I figured I could do two things: I could have a band that played like the way we used to play, and a band that was going in the direction that this, the one I have now is going in" - or the Stellar Regions session, where, according to Charles Davis, Coltrane was actively watching the clock and attempting to keep the duration of the performances to a minimum). I think this is why 65/66 is so special. There's this unanswered question of where Coltrane was headed should he have lived past 40, and one very fair assumption is that the mechanics of the quartet music would have reasserted themselves in some way. This speculation is both academic and kind of pointless, but it does drive home the point that 65/66 probably was the periphery - i.e., that's probably as messy and chaotic and daring as it was going to get. Read in that fashion, that music feels like more of a destination rather than a transition. (Accordingly, I recall Jim saying something about Interstellar Space in particular to this very effect, and that's always resonated with me.)

I feel like you could focus on the quartet material and arrive at something pretty satisfactory. The apparent difficulty is in attempting to account for the album length pieces and expanded ensembles. I sense that this is implicit in your words above, but what is so magical to me about '65 is that it sits at this perfect nexus of refinement and experimentalism. It's just so messy - and I'm not talking about the ostensible avant-garde trappings. Work of comparable significance by, for example, Cecil Taylor feels extremely finished. I'm not even convinced that a lot of '65 Trane is that good - it's just that there are so few moments along the greater timeline of American music, with its tendency to celebrate the exceptional, when someone who is so clearly the "best" at a certain kind of art makes so many decisions that are at turns wildly brave and at others overambitious and perplexing. Really - like, is Ascension "good" music? (1) I'm not sure that I care, and (2) I don't think that it matters. It is what it is.

I saw a ton of posts about this on social media and thought it was a joke. This feels like a huge deal - so much so that this particular release does not seem to necessitate an outsize promotional campaign after the fashion of Both Directions at Once. I spent a lot of time researching A Love Supreme after constructing what felt like a timely reworking a few years back, and the proportion of scholarship on this work relative to the amount of available documentation is pretty staggering. What I find particularly fascinating is that the aura of perfection surrounding ALS is probably colored by the fact that it issues from a very particular juncture in Coltrane's discography - like a span of 7 months from the studio album to Antibes. This recording adds another couple of months to the narrative of a composition that feels locked inside of a very particular artistic narrative, which (in terms of '65 Trane) feels equivalent to kicking a spaceship into hyperspace. On a personal level, I just have very fond memories of heading out on tour loaded up with all of the available '65 Trane and letting it spin - going on these 12 hour car rides listening to like one year in this dude's life. The fact that there is more - of substance - to that body of work is remarkable, and it reminds me that even written stories are often incomplete.

Thanks for the support, all! It's taken forever to put this thing together, but it's going to be a joy. (I'm also happy to report that we have a studio album in the can...) To those who have ordered: ticketing confirmations are being sent out on a rolling basis. Thanks for your patience. Finally - I thought it might bring some amusement, so here's a quick sizzle reel I threw together:

Hey, all- I'm very excited to share this project - long in the making and fraught with obstacles (this was supposed to premiere in 2020, and, well...). On Saturday, July 31, I'll be staging the online premiere of Apura, a work I initiated in 2018 as a way of exploring the bond between improvised music, a legacy of activism, and my Filipino American heritage. Joining me will be the extraordinary talents of the legendary Mr. Andrew Cyrille, Francis Wong, Lisa Mezzacappa, Rei Scampavia, and Patrick Wolff. (Lest it go unsaid, my endless thanks go to our own Alexander Hawkins + Louis Moholo-Moholo, both of whom were supposed to participate in this performance but could not attend.) Trust me when I say that if you're a fan of the classic Cecil Taylor Units, Francis Wong's work with the late Glenn Horiuchi, and the Apura recording with Messrs. Hawkins, Moholo-Moholo, and Trevor Watts, you will not be disappointed. Everyone came to play, and I've been humbled by the power and investment I've heard in this music. Tickets are available here: https://apura.brownpapertickets.com and a discount code you can use at checkout: @puraUS Details: Karl Evangelista's Apura with Special Guest Andrew Cyrille Saturday, July 31, 6pm PT/9pm PT *Video will be live for 2 days Streaming Online from Oaktown Jazz Workshops

Absolutely! There was an interval when Purple Gums was a more or less regular sight up in the Bay. The trio itself was/is really strong, but their concerts provided an opportunity to spend time with Bobby. I haven't encountered many musicians of his stature who can make an audience Q&A sound and feel so conversational and intimate.

I figure someone here may wish to see this - it's an interview conducted as part of the ongoing Purple Gums project (an improvising trio featuring Bobby, William Roper, and Francis Wong). Happy (belated) birthday, of course, to the man.

Unreal: https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1410330506487492612 "There is no structural damage to Giannis Antetokounmpo's left knee after his awkward landing last night in Atlanta; ligaments are sound, sources tell @ZachLowe_NBA and me. Timetable to return is unclear."

Giannis's injury looked pretty grisly. As a number of folks have pointed out elsewhere, there are generally on-site tests that can be performed that can identify a severe ACL injury with reasonable certainty. If news has gotten out that the Bucks org fears the worst, odds are that they're just waiting on the MRI to confirm things. (It could be good news - Kawhi's injury wound up being "only" a knee sprain.) That being said, I've been watching all of the games since the second round, and I think it's fair to argue that (a) these Hawks are legit and (b) the Bucks have neither the coaching nor the consistency of performance to put the Hawks away easily, even with Giannis on the floor. Now that it's looking like a battle of non-superstars, my feeling is that the Hawks's depth and resilience will be enough to get to the Finals - especially if the Bucks continue to struggle with offensive production and their defensive adjustments.

In terms of throwback issues, there have been plenty of recent tonal homages to Silver Age hysterics in particular, though I don't think many of them have invoked classic art styles without at least a little bit of irony. In terms of capturing a Silver Age spirit, Grant Morrison's work with Superman in particular (e.g., All-Star Superman) is fantastic. The artists Morrison tends to work with are conscious of classic art styles, though the sometimes lean toward the hyper-stylized and grotesque. Maybe more up your alley would be the work of the late Darwyn Cooke, who (in addition to working on The Spirit) penned one of the best modern DC stories about the Silver Age of comic books: The New Frontier. Cooke, like Bruce Timm (whose art style was adapted into the lauded DC cartoons of the 1990s and early 2000s), favors clean, bold lines and streamlined character design. To me, this stuff is as wonderful to read as it is easy on the eyes. More recently, Tom King and Mitch Gerads have collaborated on some really interesting mashups of vivid, Jack Kirby-style art and modern, more realist storytelling. Some of this stuff is too self-conscious for its own good, but at its best (as it was through most of their Mister Miracle miniseries), it's really great pop art.

I'm voting for Krypto. As someone who follows the fiction quite closely, it's worth noting that while all of these characters have persevered to some degree, Krypto in particular seems immune to the Modern Age de-mystifying of superhero comics (I think Krypto's little moment in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" is still one of the saddest moments in comic history).

My condolences, CA. I never interacted with Burton Greene nearly as much as I would like to have, but he seemed a real one. Regardless, his own work had a kind of vision and conceptual coherence that I find really admirable. The ESP is stellar, and I'm also very fond of Aquariana and Presenting Burton Greene (though I'm due for a re-listen on all counts). I also really enjoy the 1978 record European Heritage, which I obtained as a blind buy several years ago - it presents a blend of European folk and concert music and free jazz inflections that is pretty singular. Despite the fact that analogous experiments were pretty common at the time, I can't really identify a suitable point of comparison. I do need to dig deeper into that trio with Damon, too - what I have heard from that album is fantastic.

Hello, all- Breaking a moment of silence as I have received numerous notices that the great Milford Graves has passed away. He and I were friends. Part of my intention in beginning this thread is to see if other intimates may have some knowledge to impart that I do not - but from what I can gather in my state, we have confirmation. (The most "official" source, since it's NPR sanctioned: https://twitter.com/totalvibration/status/1360365557778960384) There's a lot to unpack here, but let me just say that the music world is tremendously fortunate to have had Professor Graves doing what he did - for so long - and so well. I consider myself spectacularly fortunate to have known his company for the past couple of years. Not to get too maudlin, but I had just sent him a belated holiday card. As in it was in the mail this morning. As Milford once said to me, "Spend time with people." Love to all folk, musical and otherwise, K

Great discussion, folks. Chiming in far too late just to articulate this point, since I've had to work with a lot of Jones/Baraka in recent days- It's been noted both here and elsewhere, but "jazz criticism" is i process unnatural to, if deeply intertwined with, the production of The Music. In a very broad (i.e., reductionist) sense, art criticism is itself a Western-coded construct, and I think it's fair to argue that for a very significant interval of jazz's lifespan, criticism existed as entity separate from the centers of Black cultural production in which the music was made. A significant change I see with the onset of the postwar period, and especially into the 1960s - in my admittedly limited perspective on the situation - is a weakening of the boundaries between criticism and music as a criticism-adjacent social process. "Black Dada Nihilismus" alone fundamentally alters Baraka's place in the early 1960s. He's not only commenting on or interacting with the musicians he's writing about - he's issuing one of the signature pieces of early free jazz, in a way defining the role of spoken word in the idiom for decades to come. For me, it's impossible to read Blues People or Black Music as anything other than the words of someone who had an intimate knowledge of not just the value but also the processes intrinsic to the music he was commenting on. This goes for his later preoccupation with R&B and soul music, too - on the New York Art Quartet's 35th Reunion Album - on which Baraka is a main voice - you can hear him singing the chorus to "Dancing In the Streets" - it's music that Baraka heard and read, yes, but it's also music that was felt and refracted back into the communities he was writing about. You can go on and on about this - not just with regard to Baraka, but also people like Stanley Crouch and Greg Tate, whose opinions are irreversibly tied to their personal experiences inside of the music. If you really want to complicate things, consider Downbeat running Kenny Dorham's excoriating reviews of Albert Ayler, or the fact that - as has come up on this board on numerous occasions - Downbeat has run a number of articles, interviews, and testimonials that are, I would argue, important parts of understanding certain artists (e.g., Larry Kart's epochal Wayne Shorter interview). There are specific academic and philosophical reasons why it is convenient to trace the arc of jazz in a straight line from plantation music, blues, ragtime, etc. to free jazz, but also keep in mind that in that free jazz resonated quite explicitly with both African American freedom struggles and leftist political movements in the 1960s. If free jazz got extra airtime, irrespective of the place that soul jazz had in actual African American communities and social spaces, it is in part because (a) again, jazz criticism is an unreliable narrator with its own biases and convictions, and (b) free jazz had embedded in its process something that was easy, if not simple, to write about. The other thing I'd stress is that it's not as if free jazz won some kind of long game here. Its visible dominance in academic narratives of the music - and its continued relevance to institutions like the NEA and the MacArthur Foundation - is something that we, as initiates of the music, are attuned to - but you'll still very rarely encounter earnest discussion of Bill Dixon or Archie Shepp in institutions of higher learning, and you're more than likely to run into Gene Ammons or Cannonball in jazz school vs. Marion Brown or, in certain circles, Ornette. Out in the "real world", this stuff is just words and, sometimes, cash.

Hello, all- Sorry for the tragically long thread title - this is Karl / ep1str0phy. In summary, my avant duo Grex is hosting Lockdown 3, a livestream music festival commemorating the release of our new record. The festival itself has a crackling bill, featuring the great DC bassist Luke Stewart, Asian Improv aRts co-founder/personal hero Francis Wong, Jordan Glenn (of Fred Frith Trio fame), the great young poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, and a really eclectic mix of cutting-edge Bay Area improv, beat music, rock, and so on. Our music has a theme of protest baked into it, meant to address inequitable living conditions in Oakland and the Philippines. In light of recent events, we thought it appropriate to put the music to some practical use. All proceeds from the sale of our record, and all donations collected at this festival, will be directed to the ACLU and to support the continued work of percussionist, educator, and researcher Milford Graves (ailing, as of late). Lockdown Festival 3 / Saturday, September 5, 4-9pm PT If you're interested in tuning in, the event is entirely on Youtube, but we're collating details + streaming links here: https://www.facebook.com/events/645326159422827 And for the righteous anti-FB crowd, here's a direct link to Grex's set, which will be updated with streaming links to the other sets: https://youtu.be/eKsjAPImWcM Finally: here's the Bandcamp page for the new record. All sales here for the foreseeable future (including limited t-shirt sales) will be directed to the aforementioned causes: https://grex.bandcamp.com/album/everything-you-said-was-wrong All the best to you all. K

It's Mbizo. If it's the Actuel Festival, Dyani being there squares out. Louis was there, too. Check the photo here:

Thanks for reading all that! There are a handful of studio recordings, yes - though (speaking only for myself) they don't really reflect the sound of this band on stage. Our big endeavor during my tenure in the band was remaking the Blue Note material, and I sense that Eddie was looking for polished work rather than fiery extrapolation. This track is kind of in the middle: Whatever may or may not have survived the 2010s, I know that Eddie often had a camera running at shows. There were a handful of performances, many of them in front of actual crowds, that were unreal. In my admittedly incomplete knowledge of Eddie, these performances might be considered too rough or aggressive to issue, but were they to get out, they might offer a more "honest" perspective on the way that this music communicated to both its audiences and its participants. There were things that Eddie allowed (or wanted) us to do on stage that never made it to record, and those are the moments that I'll always remember the most fondly. As an aside, Damon Smith recently posted about a Bay Area show that featured Eddie, Damon, Brotzmann, and Jackson Krall. They were performing for a group of school children. I feel as if Eddie was up to this kind of activity all the time, and as a player, he had a remarkable penchant for making himself heard (in the best way possible) in contexts where brevity or restraint were encouraged. I wish that more of this music had survived for posterity.

First off, thanks to everyone for the kind words and remembrances. Not to speak on his behalf, but I sense that Eddie would have enjoyed being remembered in this way. Second - and with the intention of demythologizing a little bit - Eddie did these kinds of gigs all the time. This was actually one of the things that caused friction - it was impossible to tell when Eddie had booked a "public rehearsal" vs. a "real gig" (his distinction). I'll never forget this one time when I barreled from Richmond out to San Jose in rush hour traffic, only to arrive at an empty bistro with six, seven band members on stage. I cut my hand open while setting up, which resulted in the hilarious image of the guitar player frantically searching for unbloodied paper towels, hardcore freebop blasting out at an audience of no one. To speak more analytically - over time, I had a deepening feeling that this weird quirk of Eddie's performance practice was generational in nature. He came up at a time when the notion of live casual performance had different implications, and despite the passage of time and the changing topography of the music business, I still think that this is where his head was at most of the time. But - and this is an object lesson in what it takes to survive at the fringes of this music for, what, half a century or more - Eddie was very big into the business aspects of the music. There was an entrepreneurial charisma to him that forgave some of the wobblier musical and bureaucratic decisions - you just couldn't bring yourself to be upset at anything for too long, because everything he did was just so audacious. We'd play two, three shows to middling audiences, and then out of nowhere, we'd be playing a concert hall (in the middle of nowhere) to hundreds of strangers. Sometimes the "company" would be a little questionable - we'd grumble about it for a bit - and two gigs later, this shredding drummer will have come out of nowhere. Then there was this one time that we played a benefit at Yoshi's - really difficult gig - in the company of John Handy, George Cables, Bobby Hutcherson, Steve Turre, and countless others. I got to hang out with those guys thanks to Eddie, and, again, I was pretty young. It still blows my mind when I think about it. To put it a different way, late last year, I was at a gig under the leadership of a different "Great Free Jazz" musician (who I'll refrain from naming, if only because the anecdote is kind of bullshit) - not long after the gig, I heard a guy in the corner say - in the loudest, most obnoxious voice possible - "Wow. A lot of people came out here for Musician X. The last time I saw him there was absolutely no one there." Musician X was and is a superstar. What troubled me is that obnoxious voice guy clearly said it in order to convey his own cultural cache. Obviously this isn't what you're doing, duaneiac (or anyone else where, for that matter) - I only remain troubled at this notion that the suffering in this music equates in some way to value. I think that we as acolytes and, if we're lucky, participants in this music are trained to fetishize its marginality. For me, the valuable takeaway in music like Eddie's is its ability to survive and thrive at any cost, which is as beautifully (and quaintly) American a thing as you can enjoy at a time as dark as this.

Seizing permission to speak freely here - Eddie was and is very important to me. We had a complicated working relationship insofar as he was tremendously exacting, and often in ways that could be frustrating of off-putting, but I never - for a second - doubted the integrity of his artistry or his realness as a person. I owe multitudes to him for taking me under his wing at a very early stage of my career. He was warm, generous, and infectiously excitable, and he give me the invaluable experience of working with an actual, dyed-in-the-wool free jazz auteur. I think that only those among us who've had the opportunity to work with the old school free guys will understand what I'm saying here - and I say this not by way of self-aggrandizing or humble-bragging, but in order to document a phenomenon that is so specific and so quickly passing from the land of the living. It's difficult to define, but it's analogous to playing changes you're really comfortable with in company that is surpassingly facile at them - when you're thrown in the pool with people who are master improvisers in accordance with some metric, you just hang on. When you're able to ride the wave, as I've been fortunate enough to on occasion, you feel these flashes of profundity that remind you why you fell in love with this music in the first place. At its best, playing with Eddie was like that. It's a tragedy to me that this lesson cannot be communicated in a classroom or through a book, because the number of people who can teach it numbers so very few. Eddie was an iron man - like he was in crazy good shape some 5-10 years ago, back when I was working with him - so his passing is a reminder that you need to seek out the OGs while they're still here. As Milford Graves once told me, "Spend time with people." RIP, Eddie. You were a real one. Not a doubt in my mind.